nearly so, only if the COIN effort is directed at an irregular enemy with which it
shares public and strategic cultures, as in some civil wars. But when a foreign power
undertakes a campaign against an irregular foe, it is bound to be more or less
ignorant of the cultural context of the struggle into which it is intruding.
9.Deny the irregular enemy sanctuaries and external support. Every insurgent force
requires a safe base area in which to rest, recover, train, indoctrinate, and wait for
opportunities to strike. While it is important to try to deny sanctuaries and foreign
support to insurgents, even considerable success in those endeavours is only of
secondary strategic importance. If the COIN strategy succeeds in winning the minds
of a sufficient number of civilians, it will not much matter whether the irregulars
have secure sanctuaries.
10.Time is a weapon. Of all the dimensions of war and strategy, time is the least
forgiving. Mistakes committed in every other dimension can be corrected, in theory
at least. But time passed is strictly irretrievable. As Mao argued in his lectures ‘On
Protracted War’, an initially militarily weaker insurgent has to use time as an ally.
By prolonging a conflict, the irregular tests the patience of the regular enemy, and
especially that of its domestic public.
11.Undercut the irregular enemy politically. This will not always be possible, but it is
still vital. In Algeria the French Army was expert in COIN. It believed it had
mastered the military-technical conduct of what it termed ‘modern war’ (Trinquier,
1964). But although it knew from its bitter recent experience in Indo-China that
irregular warfare was a thoroughly political undertaking, it was trapped in a non-
permissive political context. France simply did not have a political story to offer its
Muslim citizens in Algeria that they found attractive. As a result, although the French
Army won the warfare, France lost the war.
These principles do not comprise the golden key to certain victory against irregular
enemies. Every historical case, past, present and future, is different, so the advice may
not be practicable in the circumstances of a particular insurgency. However, if a COIN
campaign is to have any prospect of success, it needs to be founded upon an under-
standing of these principles. Once they are well understood, they can be adapted to fit
local conditions.
Irregular warfare: an overview
For the same strategic reason that warfare between a continental and a maritime power
is liable to stalemate, so warfare between regulars and irregulars is also prone to
deadlock. This is because neither side can exercise decisive strategic leverage against the
other. In both cases, there is a contrast in dominant military cultures. A country supreme
on land may well be weak at sea. An unbeatable navy is likely to coexist with a second-
class army (in quantity if not necessarily in quality). Historical examples are not in short
supply: Athens and Sparta, Rome and Carthage, Britain and France, Britain and Germany
in 1940, to cite but a few. The arrival of mature air power, long-range missiles and nuclear
weapons has altered the terms of a strategic stand-off in some cases, but the dilemma
in question here still remains. Strategically regarded, irregular warfare is as liable to
stalemate today as it was a century ago, and for the same reason: neither side is able to
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